[MD] Social Intellectual

[MarshaV]

On Jul 25, 2010, at 2:55 PM, david buchanan wrote:

> 
> Marsha asked how patterns and objects differ.

dmb,

I asked what YOU thought the difference was between
patterns and objects. 


> dmb says:
> 
> Previously, I noticed that you've used (or rather misused) the word "reification" to make the same objectionable point, namely that static patterns are ever-changing and amorphous. Reification is a fallacy, a conceptual error wherein abstractions are mistaken for real things. You could call it the thingification of ideas. Plato's forms would be the classic example but this is also what James and Pirsig are saying about subjects and objects. When they say that subjects and objects are not the starting points of experience but rather concepts derived from experience, they are saying that subjects and objects have been reified. They are concepts mistaken for ontological realities, for real substances. 

This first paragraph is your critique of your confused 
understanding of what I think.  It does not address the 
question.

---------

> To say that objects are patterns of inorganic quality is to
> say that they aren't pre-existing material realities but rather
> they are among the many marvelous analogues we've
> created in response to DQ.

Analogues?   

> Man is the measure of all things, not the measurer.

How does this address the question I asked?
   

> That is to say we invented reality and so it's not pre-existing.

How does this address a comparison between patterns and 
objects?


> Man is a participant in the creation of all things. Every last bit of it, he says. 

In this paragraph who is "he says", and how does it address 
the difference between patterns and objects. 

---------

> Now the experience from which we derive ideas such a rocks is quite real.

Patterns or objects?   


> That experience is what makes our reality seem so substantial
> and the idea of substance works quite well in many situations.

I do not notice any reference to patterns or objects.


> But it's still just a secondary reality, a tool we invented to deal with experience.

Not reference to patterns or objects here either.


> So is the so-called physical universe.

Patterns?  Objects?  Intellectual competence?    


> It's just a very grand and elaborate analogue.

And how does this beautiful pronouncement 
address the difference between patterns and 
objects?


> Pirsig reminds us that "substance" or "matter" was invented by the ancient
> philosophers.

And the difference between independent objects and static patterns 
of value is addressed here how?  


> He reminds us that the existence of such a thing is really just inferred
> from experience.

Yes?  


> It's a theoretical entity that is supposed to explain how the particular
> qualities set of qualities that make up a rock all stick together or inhere.

This doesn't address the difference between objects and patterns.


> Its roundness, heaviness, greyness or whatever are supposed to be
> features of a thing, then the thing in itself becomes more real than the
> experiences from which they were derived, the original experience that
> produced the "thing" in the first place is relegated to "merely" a subjective
> impression.

So the question (the difference between objects and patterns)  is a question 
you haven't had much time to investigate?    


> James and Pirsig are flipping this idea upside down and that's their
> Copernican revolution.
>  
> And that's how patterns are different from things.  See?

Got it.   



Marsha  




  
 
 
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